Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 16th, 2015
“2,000 years ago, the Bible prophesied the return of Christ...but only after God inflicts seven years of torment on the world to test the faith of mankind.”
It's not quite seven years long, but this two-part, three-hour TV movie — History's latest foray into original filmmaking — is likely to test the faith (and patience) of anyone who watches it. Revelation: The End of Days is intentionally less glossy than previous network offerings like Bonnie & Clyde and Houdini because it takes a ground-level look at the apocalypse. But in scaling back to achieve that aesthetic, the result is both frustrating and amateurish.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 12th, 2015
When you think about the biblical stories that have made it onto the big (or small) screen, they tend to focus on names like Jesus, Moses and Noah. (And Moses again, just for good measure.) To be honest, I didn't even realize how few Bible adaptations focus on women until I popped in The Red Tent, a Lifetime miniseries based on Anita Diamant's best-selling novel of the same name. While The Red Tent certainly shouldn't be taken as gospel, it deserves credit for exploring biblical events from a different perspective.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 11th, 2015
"I'm Leonardo da Vinci. Revolutionary painter, artist and visionary, of the Republic of Florence."
The term “Renaissance man” is often used to describe a person who has a very wide range of interests in which they have become quite skilled. It's taken from the traits of the many artists, innovators and writers of the 15th century. And while the term might well apply to any number of such historical figures, there is none for whom it is more apt than Leonardo DaVinci.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on March 10th, 2015
I’m starting to wonder if it is time we officially made a sub-genre for kidnapping films. It’s a storyline that has been played out for decades but continues to offer up some engaging and oftentimes heart-wrenching tales that for the most part have happy endings but that seems to be a far stretch from reality, though I doubt audiences are looking for these bleak realistic endings and mostly prefer the Hollywood ending where everyone is rescued in just the nick of time. When Prisoners came out, I had hopes that it would be a film that wouldn’t shy away from the harsh realities, and for the most part it succeeded, but I still felt it held back.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 9th, 2015
Even though one of the main characters in The Red Road is a police officer, the show's six-episode first season plays less like your typical cop drama and more like an extended profile of two strained communities. There's the fictional town of Walpole, N.J. and the Lenape tribe that lives in the neighboring Ramapo Mountains. While the show certainly touches on the tension between the two communities, too much time here is devoted to multi-generational family drama that we've seen before. In other words, the show too often neglects the things that make it unique.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 5th, 2015
“There’s no place on Earth with more magic and superstition mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands.”
To build its slate of original programming, Starz has largely decided to look to the past. In recent years, the premium cable network has produced shows like Da Vinci’s Demons, The White Queen, and Black Sails, each of them (loosely) historical dramas with varying amounts of nudity sprinkled in. But it took a trip to the Scottish Highlands — and to the 18th century — for the channel to find its biggest hit to date.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on March 3rd, 2015
"Remember when our biggest problem was which Mayan to kill?"
All good things come to an end, and all rides eventually reach their destination. It's all come home for the gang at Sons of Anarchy, and you can believe that if anyone is left standing when it's over, there will be scars. Kurt Sutter has taken the culture of the motorcycle club, don't call them a gang, and made it accessible to a regular audience. He did that not by attempting to overwhelm us with the iconography of the genre.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 3rd, 2015
“The cop here thinks he's The Bodyguard.”
At first glance, Beyond the Lights could easily be dismissed as an updated, less starry version of the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston romantic blockbuster. Both feature a glamorous pop star falling in love with her strait-laced protector. But while The Bodyguard became a bona fide pop culture phenomenon, Beyond the Lights had a much less dazzling run in theaters, grossing just over $14 million. It’s a shame because the flawed newer film has some interesting ideas about celebrity, artistic integrity, and…black women’s hair.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 25th, 2015
"There's been some trouble with the women hereabouts...it's bad."
What exactly is a Western? That's the question that the cast and crew of The Homesman struggle with here. They appear to be divided on the subject, and the same sentiment will likely make this one a little harder to pigeonhole. That's not necessarily important except when it comes to marketing a film. An audience wants some kind of an idea what they're getting when they see it on the shelf of their local video store. Tommy Lee Jones wrote, directed and stared in this period piece, and he'd rather you not call it a Western. Others connected with the film are on board with the genre label.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on February 23rd, 2015
Sometimes in film the drama behind the scenes can be more interesting than the actual film we see up on the big screen. For writer/director Paul Schrader, having drama behind the scenes that effects the final project that we get to see is something he is more familiar with than he’d care to admit to. The firestorm that occurred with the release of 2005’s Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist became so intense that the studio insisted upon a new director to come in and do extensive reshoots that subsequently led to the release of a separate film directed by Renny Harlin
